


Tears in the Middle of the Night

by FireSoul



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Character Death, Post Destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8246687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: After a rough mission Ray decides to check and make sure Sara's ok, and he expects to find that she is. But instead he finds the exact opposite, not that the rough mission has anything to do with it.





	

It had been a rough few days.

Ever since the mission began, whenever Ray thought about the end of it, he had imagined a celebration over Savage's death. But instead they had only taken a moment or two to bask in the glory of their success, and then it was right back to business. Sure they had all taken time to think about Rip's offer to throw back in with him, but they all knew that the decision was an easy one, even for Kendra and Carter who opted out. But they hadn't even so much as gotten back on the ship when a man named Rex Tyler, claiming to be from the JSA, showed up and warned them all that their mission would be nothing more than suicide. Yet they all boarded the ship, prophesy hanging over their heads and all.

Maybe they shouldn't have.

So far they had almost died a total of six times when combining everyone's experiences, and the mission was only four days in. Today it had been Ray and Sara, adding numbers five and six to the tally, and while Sara had claimed she was fine and certainly appeared so for the rest of the day; Ray was still pretty shaken. He decided that since it was now the middle of the night, or what they were calling night considering they were in the temporal zone, he might as well check on her just to make sure she's truly ok. He approached her door and was about to knock, when he thought he heard a noise on the other side. It sounded almost like a whimper, and so instead of knocking he simply pressed the button to open her door.

He was not prepared for the sight he found when it opened.

Sara was lying flat on her stomach, her blankets thrown off her and one leg hanging carelessly over the edge of the mattress. Briefly, Ray noticed that she wasn't wearing any pants. Instead she was clad in a simple white tank top and her underwear, and for once he didn't have the time to be awkward about the sight. Her head was angled to the side so that she could breath but he almost doubted that she was, as her face was alarmingly red and tears streamed down it while she cried out bloody murder. He hadn't realized until that moment just how soundproof the walls on the Waverider are, because he should've been able to hear her from down the hall. But again, he didn't focus on this fact. All he focused on was the fact that Sara was clearly very far from ok.

He hustled into her room, her door closing behind him and blocking out the light of the hallway so that he could no longer really see her or where he was going. But he managed to stumble over to her bed, hands stretched out in front of him until they came to rest on the very edge of the mattress.

"Sara!" He exclaimed in a whisper, cautiously placing one hand on the top of her back only to feel how hot and flushed her skin had become. Despite not saying anything to him, Sara did roll on her side when he tried to sit on the edge of the mattress, at least letting him know that she was perfectly aware of his presence. "Sara it's ok, come on, I'll take you to the med bay and Gideon can check you over." He promised, their near death experiences today had involved them being knocked out and later held at gunpoint. Ray didn't think, up until now, that their captors had done anything to Sara other than threaten her, but he must have missed something.

Or maybe not, because the moment he mentioned the med bay Sara began shaking her head violently and pulling the crumpled mess of her sheets up from under her until she was clutching a corner to her chest.

"Sara, if they did something to you-" Her head shaking cut him off again, and she opened her mouth as if to say something but the only thing that came out was loud sob. "Alight," Ray huffed out in a defeated voice, suddenly feeling more like he was dealing with a hysterical child instead of the team's resident assassin. "Where does it hurt?" He asked but again she shook her head. "Nothing hurts?" He asked disbelievingly, this time when Sara shook her head it was in an up and down motion to confirm his statement. "Then what's wrong? Is it a nightmare?" He asked but this time Sara didn't respond, just choked back a sob before she began hyperventilating and pushing herself to sit up.

As she sat there, breath hitching sharply in her throat over and over again, Ray couldn't help but start to feel scared. He watched her fearfully, wondering what could've brought a meltdown like this upon her of all people if not physical pain.

"I…miss…" She managed to choke out before another sob wracked through her body and she all but fell forward, crashing her face into Ray's chest and taking him off guard. But he was able to put together her words, figuring out what it was she was trying to say; she was crying for Laurel.

Now understanding the situation before him, Ray wrapped his arms around Sara's back and held her closer to him. He expected her to pull away, but she must really be hurting because she instead clutched the fabric of his t-shirt with her fists as though he were her anchor to the world.

"I'm so sorry Sara," he whispered to her, "Laurel didn't deserve to die." He assured her.

Truthfully, in all that had been happening, the team had barely acknowledged Laurel's death. They had all given Sara their condolences, but they hadn't really talked about the Black Canary at all.

"It's not… It's not… It's not Laurel." Sara sobbed; leaving Ray utterly perplexed for the next few minutes while she sobbed into his chest and tried to calm herself enough to speak.

"I miss… I… miss… Leonard…" She cried, just barely managing to get out the name of their former teammate before another fit of sobs came flooding out of her.

Ray had no idea what to do with that information, at all. Sure he knew that Sara and Snart were friends, especially after everything that happened with Mick. Without his partner, Sara had become the person on the Waverider whom Snart was seen with the most. They had their card games, their tendency to start bar fights in any era they visited for longer than five minutes, and they had their… their flirty banter.

Ray's eyes widened in realization when he thought about that; when he began to rethink everything about the relationship between the crook and the assassin. Had there been more to it than he realized? He, nor any of the others, really knew what exactly kept drawing the two unlikely members of the team back to each other. He had never given much thought to it, but now that Sara was suddenly reduced to a sobbing mess in his arms as though she were a child, he began to wonder. What went on between the two of them when no one but Gideon was watching?

Now that he thought about it, he HAD noticed that they became very proficient in communicating without words at some point. Should he have looked deeper into the meanings behind those looks?

"Probably not," he thought to himself, figuring that Snart likely would've caught on and iced him.

Another sob from Sara pulled him from his thoughts. He looked down to see that she had now taken to scrubbing profusely at her eyes, trying to force away the tears.

"I'm sorry," she apologized but he only tightened his hold on her.

"Don't," he instructed, "Don't be sorry." He said and although she didn't stop trying to calm herself, she didn't apologize again.

For a long while they just sat there, Sara sniffling and rubbing at her eyes while Ray cradled her in his arms. Eventually she quieted, and the two of them remained in the comfortable silence of the dark room until Sara felt that it needed to be broken.

"I thought this was gone," she murmured, feeling Ray's eyes shift back to her rather than the empty wall they had both been staring at. "After I came back, I didn't feel much of anything." She began to explain; "The first thing I did after Constantine restored my soul… was go after Nyssa." She shuddered, fighting back another wave of tears that she wouldn't let spill, not yet. "Long story short she broke up with me, and told me to get on with my life." She shuddered again, harder this time, and took a breath to compose herself.

"Sara-" Ray began, trying to let her know that she didn't owe him any kind of explanation, but she cut him off.

"I was in love with her," she confessed, refusing to look up at him and meet his gaze. "But when she told me to go, I felt next to nothing." She confessed, inhaling a deep and unsteady breath. "I felt disappointed, which is not what you should feel when somebody you love basically tells you that they hope they never see you again." She stopped just long enough to wipe away a tear and draw another breath. "I went and had a few one night stands, but it was like I was just going through the motions. In fact that's how everything was until Rip recruited me." She admitted, Ray hanging on to every word that she said. "When we were in the 70's, and Leonard, Mick, and I started that bar fight, it was the first time I had felt like myself since coming back." She confessed; a small smile that Ray could just barely see from his angle making it's way onto her face.

"So… what did you think was gone?" He asked when he realized that she might have forgotten about her statement. "Now that Snart's gone, you don't feel like yourself anymore?"

"Not exactly," she answered, an uncomfortable hesitance lacing her voice. "The way I feel right now, I haven't felt in a long time. I thought it was beaten out of me during my first time in the league, or on Lian Yu, or maybe even Ivo's ship." She began to explain, albeit not very well considering Ray isn't always great at reading between the lines. "This is something that I thought I lost long before I died."

"And it is?" Ray questioned, still not anymore clear on the statement than he had been a few seconds ago.

"I feel like half of my heart was ripped out of my chest." She confessed, still not meeting Ray's eyes but she must have been able to sense his shock. "Yeah, threw me for a loop too." She admitted, reaching up and wiping more tears from her eyes as she sniffled and her body finally began to stop trembling.

"Sara…" Ray trailed off with his words, because what could he say? Now that he was beginning to see what Snart had really meant to Sara he was able to recognize the kind of pain she was feeling, something he had felt when he lost Anna, and because he knew the pain he knew that there was nothing he could say or do to take it away.

"It's funny," she remarked, not seeming to notice her friend's hesitance. "A part of me is glad to know that I still can feel this way, and another part just wants it to stop."

Ray sighed at her words; it was rare that he felt he could truly understand anything about Sara and the inner workings of her mind. But this, sadly, was an exception.

"I know that it hurts," he finally said, "I know it feels like the worst possible thing that could've ever happened to you has, and considering you found out about Laurel just hours after we lost Snart I can't even imagine what it must feel like for you. But you still have a home, you still have us, and I know that Snart wouldn't want you to close yourself off to that." He told her and she hummed in agreement to the statement, which honestly was more than Ray was thinking he would get from her.

"I won't," she promised, finally looking up and meeting his gaze as though she felt she needed to show him the seriousness in her eyes.

Ray nodded, and it was then that Sara finally maneuvered herself out of his grasp, though she still remained seated next to him.

"Thank you," she said, once again staring vacantly ahead of her and refusing to meet his eyes.

"Anytime," He assured her with a caring smile as he stood from the bed, ruffling her hair as he left, which earned a small smile from her.

Once Ray was gone and her door shut behind him, Sara got up and began rummaging the floor for her long discarded pants. As she had calmed down and the temperature of her body fell, she began to notice the chill in the room once again. She smirked to herself as she slipped them on, wondering what Leonard would've thought of seeing her in them. They were her favorite pajama pants, old and left over from before the gambit. She loved them because of how warm and comfy they are, so as long they fit her she would wear them on cold nights. But she could only imagine the crook's face, trying to hold back a comment at the electric green coloring with neon pink hearts decorating the fluffy, albeit matted after all these years, fabric. She crawled back into bed as she wiped away another tear and inhaled yet another shaky breath, determined not to break down all over again.

She tried to distract herself by untangling her mess of sheets and other blankets, but it hardly did any good. Finally, when her blankets were still twisted together in odd ways but she determined enough had been straightened out to cover her, she settled onto her back and pulled the blankets up to her chest.

"I miss you Leonard," she said to the ceiling above her, almost certain that the spirit of the man to whom she was speaking could not hear her. But she spoke anyway, and wiped another tear from her eye. "But, since you decided that you had to go and die, could you do me a favor? Keep an eye on Laurel for me." She requested and with that and a few more light tears, sleep finally washed over her.


End file.
